


Same Time Next Week

by fictionallemons



Series: Burning for You [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Mutual Pining, Non-Hunter Winchesters (Supernatural), Not Actually Unrequited Love, POV Outsider, Romantic love, Sibling Incest, Soulmates, Therapy, non hunter au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:48:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29906859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictionallemons/pseuds/fictionallemons
Summary: Sam's first meeting with Dr. F, from Dr. F's POV.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Series: Burning for You [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2199081
Comments: 9
Kudos: 17





	Same Time Next Week

**Author's Note:**

> Once again, I'm totally not a therapist. This is fiction. Enjoy.
> 
> This is a short companion piece to I'm Burning For You. I think you can probably get the gist of this if you haven't read IBFY, but you will be spoiled if you read this first.

Jerry Farnsworth's Tuesdays were his busiest days client-wise. He had two group meetings at the addiction recovery center in the morning. His specialty wasn't addiction—they had other doctors and therapists for that—but he ran a general group where folks could talk about whatever they want—frustrations with the recovery process, issues with their partners, grief or guilt over their past choices. He usually tried to steer the conversation to a hopeful place by the end—reminding these people that they had taken concrete steps to heal, that they should be proud of what they'd accomplished so far, even if it was only one day, one hour. He believed that if someone has hope, they can do anything.

After group, he grabbed an early lunch and settled in for his afternoon in the office. First up was Nancy, the former big-tech executive who'd been slowly coming to terms with her bisexuality and was considering leaving her emotionally distant husband. Then Miguel, who processed things verbally and whose partner begged him to make a weekly therapy appointment so he could verbally process with someone else. Jerry had just stopped seeing Jo, a young woman who was having trouble getting over her ex. Even after he'd gotten engaged to another woman, he was all she could think about. He'd worked with her for months, and together they'd gotten her to a place where she could acknowledge that she hadn't been able to let go of him not because he was so amazing, but because his leaving her had echoed very similarly the way in which her father had left her mother when she was a teenager, and she'd needed to come to terms with her parents' divorce and her relationship with them. A couple of weeks ago she'd gone on a date with a friend of a friend and while it wasn't love at first sight, afterward she'd called Jerry, excited about the personal victory of even being able to think about a relationship with a new person.

Which left him a hole in his schedule. Dean had called last week and asked to make an appointment for his brother, and Jerry's answering service had slotted him into that Tuesday afternoon space. 

His eyebrows had raised when he saw the name—Sam Winchester. It wasn't completely unheard of for him to see members of the same family, but usually it was in a group setting, couples counseling or maybe a parent and teen. He'd only met Sam once, in the early days when he'd just started working with Dean and was still coming to realize was a remarkable young man he was. Almost everything he knew about Sam he knew from Dean, which gave him a peculiar lens with which to greet this particular client. Because if he knew one thing about Dean Winchester, it was that he loved his brother. He revered him, almost. Dean got frustrated by Sam, he was hurt by him occasionally, but he normally found a way to turn whatever negative feelings he had about Sam around on himself. If Dean felt abandoned, it was because Sam deserved a better life, that he was capable of great things. Sam was brilliant, and funny, and strong, according to Dean. Jerry had spent years helping Dean to see that not every good trait in the Winchester family was possessed by Sam.

So it was with a little bit of trepidation that he decided to keep the appointment. He owed it to Dean to give Sam some time, if that's what they needed. He'd heard from Dean that Sam's ex-girlfriend had died tragically, and that Sam wasn't bouncing back from the event very well. Jerry understood grief. If he could help Sam with this difficult period, well, then, he'd be helping Dean, too. 

Jerry had long admitted to himself that he had a soft spot for Dean Winchester, the unusually good looking young man with one of the saddest childhoods he'd ever come across, but who got back up to standing every single time he was knocked down, who was determined to do right by his little brother, who had one of the purest, most loving hearts he'd ever known.

He was, in fact, prepared to dislike Sam the tiniest bit. In his mind, he'd fashioned him as slightly selfish, focused on his own goals at the expense of his brother's emotional well-being. But that wasn't fair. Sam was entitled to his own life. To his own path, even if that took him far from the brother whose life had always been about making Sam's life possible. Jerry had been at this for a long time. He could maintain objectivity. He was a professional.

Sam arrived on time, wearing jeans and a flannel over a Winchester Pie Company shirt. Jerry had to crane his neck to look him in the eyes as he greeted him and led him back to the office. Dean was big, but Sam was bigger. All he same, he scrunched himself into the chair, as if trying to make himself seem smaller.

Jerry instinctively wanted to put him at ease. He recalled that Sam was about the same age as Dean was when he started coming to see him. And that Sam was the one who'd encouraged Dean to engage in therapy in the first place. So he smiled. "It's good to see you, Sam. Why don't we start with you telling me why you're here today?"

He expected to hear something about the dead ex-girlfriend, or feelings of being depressed. But Sam said something else.

"Well, before we get to anything else you should know that I'm in love with Dean."

Jerry blinked. He studied Sam's face. His unusual, slightly slanted eyes were steady and clear, but his mouth was turned down, almost defiantly. He wasn't joking. He didn't appear to be ashamed. But he wasn't unafraid of Jerry's reaction.

At first, he didn't know how to react, but not because of what Sam said. Because it had taken him years to get Dean comfortable with communicating his feelings, and there Sam was coming out with a declaration of love in the first minute.

"Okay. Let's talk about that, then." He kept his voice level and open.

Sam's eyes widened a fraction. He took a deep breath. "You know that Jessica, my ex, but more than that, we were really good friends, died a few weeks ago. Actually, a couple of months now. Wow. Um, she knew how I feel about Dean. And now that she's gone, oh god, I miss her so much, but it's more like—I need to talk to someone about this because if I don't it's just going to come bubbling up out of me one day and I can't tell Dean about it, ever, so. That's why I'm here."

By the end of the session, Sam had talked about how he'd felt this way about his brother since forever, at first as a sort of all-encompassing love that one might naturally have for the person you're closest to in the entire world, both because they're the only person you have and because that person is just so worthy of all the love you can possibly give them. Then it changed, intensified as Sam went through adolescence, realized that he was attracted to both girls and boys, that Dean was the most physically beautiful person Sam could ever imagine and he'd angsted over the fact that the person he desired most in the world was the one person he wasn't allowed to have. 

Sam talked about going to college, craving a solution, wanting his feelings to go away with distance and when that didn't happen, trying to make something normal happen to at least allow him to preserve what they had as brothers. Jessica was amazing, sweet and funny and smart and she liked Dean. It wasn't until they broke up when they went abroad that he finally told her that while he loved her, he loved Dean in every way, including every way he shouldn't. She'd been understanding. Supportive, even. She'd agreed that he probably could never act on his feelings, but that he could still have a life, with Dean as his brother and relationships with other people if he wanted to. In Italy, he'd felt the loss of Dean keenly enough that he finally experimented with men for the first time, and the physical side was great, even if he missed Dean more than ever.

Sam's emotions poured out of him in stark contrast with how Jerry had to wait patiently for every nugget of feelings that Dean offered up. It wasn't that Sam felt more and that Dean felt less, but Sam had had one advantage that Dean hadn't had. He'd had Dean in his corner his entire life. Even Dean hadn't had that.

The river of Sam's words finally trickled to a stop when Sam said, "If you never want to see me after this, I don't blame you. You've been really good for Dean, and I wouldn't want your relationship with him to be damaged by this. But I thought maybe—maybe you'd…I don't know. Understand? Since you've spent so much time with Dean. I don't know. I'm sorry, I guess, for putting it on you—"

Jerry finally interrupted, speaking for the first time since almost the beginning of the session. He can't exactly explain what happened to him as he listened to Sam talk, but he felt profoundly moved. "Don't apologize, Sam. Nothing I've heard today is going to damage my relationship with Dean. And I do want to keep working with you, if that's something you'd like."

Sam looked sharply at him. "Really?"

Jerry didn't know how to put that profound feelings into words yet. After four years with Dean and forty five minutes with Sam, he just had this feeling. That these two people were, in a way, made for each other. He hadn't explicitly thought to himself at any point in the last four years that Dean had feelings of romantic love toward his brother. Perhaps if Dean had those feelings he was keeping them so far inside of him that he'd deny them even to himself. But he had the sense that this was not unrequited pining on Sam's part. Even if it wasn't romantic in nature, he had definitely watched Dean pine for Sam for four years. It never occurred to him that Sam could have been pining all this time for Dean, as well.

Jerry wasn't a religious man. He believed in science, in reason. But he was also a romantic. He believed in soulmates. And after listening to Sam's earnest, passionate words about how much he loved his brother, after watching Dean struggle with the limits of his love for Sam, when there seemed to be no real limit at all—well, Jerry didn't doubt that what the two had between them was something very rare. Something very real. Something profound. 

They were soulmates.

But how to go about easing them both into a reality where their feelings might not be unrequited? Knowing what he did of Dean, Jerry didn't think a direct approach was going to work. In a flash of inspiration, he remembered Castiel Novak. They'd met at a regional conference a couple of years earlier, not long after Castiel and his wife had settled in the area. He was familiar with Castiel's specialty. Perhaps it was time for Dean to get a second opinion. In the meantime, Jerry could continue working with Sam, to make sure he had a supportive ear in the wake of Jessica's death.

Yes, Jerry Farnsworth cared very much about the Winchester brothers. He wanted them to be happy. He considered it an honor to help them in any way he could.

"Really, Sam. Same time next week?"

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to continue posting little timestamps and additions to I'm Burning For You, so subscribe to the series if you like. Thanks for reading! <3


End file.
